


hold you down so you don't fly apart

by rhale



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Frottage, M/M, Mick Rory knows PTSD when he sees it, POV Mick Rory, Protective Mick Rory, Protective Ray, Seriously you are stressing Mick out, Skin Hunger, Stop stranding Ray Palmer in the timeline, Sword-fighting Ray Palmer, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:20:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23517571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhale/pseuds/rhale
Summary: Ray Palmer gets stranded in a post-apocalyptic future.For five years.When the Waverider finally picks him up again, he's acquired some new habits and Mick sets about getting their nerd back home.
Relationships: Ray Palmer/Mick Rory
Comments: 7
Kudos: 135





	hold you down so you don't fly apart

**Author's Note:**

> An anonymous commenter mentioned that comics!Ray becomes a master swordsman, and that sparked a thought about how that might have happened, and how Mick might react. Less badassery than I had intended at the beginning, but I have a real weakness for Mick's protective streak.
> 
> I do horrible things to verb tenses in this fic. I'm a monster and I'm sorry. (Sort of sorry. A little sorry.)

It didn’t sit right with Mick, leaving someone behind.

It didn’t sit right that it seemed to happen to Haircut more often than anyone else.

He’d listened, sort of, when Blondie and the Professor explained what was going on with the timeline. That there was some sort of temporal entropic whatsit that meant that dropping the Waverider back down where and when Ray had gotten trapped would cause all sorts of problems throughout the timeline.

But being a thief didn’t seem like it did a damn bit of good if he couldn’t break the rules to go grab something — or someone — he wanted to have where he was.

But he’d listened. And he hadn’t mutinied, that time. And he’d let the eggheads figure out how they were going to solve the problem and when, after months outside of the time stream, they’d finally pinpointed the earliest they could jump to go get their super-suit-wearing nerd back, he’d barely even growled at them to get a move on.

Months on the Waverider.

It’d been longer for Ray.

“Five years. Or — you know, thereabouts. Some of the entropic field distortions are making that calculation harder than you might expect,” Stein had said, looking like he’d rather be giving that lecture to a room full of students rather than one irritated arsonist.

~

Between the 50s, prehistory, and the post-apocalyptic chaos that Ray’d gotten himself stuck in this time, there didn’t seem to be a time period where Ray Palmer couldn’t survive. It was hard not to like that about a guy.

And it got a little harder when they dropped down behind the hideout where Ray’s transponder was beeping and found the tinkering boy scout dressed like he’d walked off the set of some cyberpunk teen drama: leather pants, weird light-up sword, and all.

“‘Bout time,” he’d said, something rough in his voice, eyes locking onto Mick and holding the two of them still like they’d trip a pressure plate if they moved.

Eventually, the spell broke and the tension lifted and they’d all high-tailed it out of there before they could make anything any more complicated, but Mick couldn’t stop thinking about that look on Haircut’s face.

~

It isn’t until they’ve been back on the Waverider for a few weeks — local tyrant in Haircut’s post-apocalypse overthrown and the timeline back on track — that Mick recognizes what he’s seeing in the boy scout’s behavior.

He’s seen it in Len, in himself, in any number of the guys he’s known to have spent time on the inside.

Ray is watching the exits, maintaining his sight lines like someone who expects to catch a shiv in the mess hall. Once Mick notices it, the hyper-vigilance is obvious. It’s in the tension in his shoulders, the straight line of his back when he used to melt over the furniture like a puppet with all his strings cut. It’s in the way his smile is tight and small, even when Pretty Boy is needling him until he laughs.

And it’s in the way he trains with Sara.

Sometime in those five years he’d spent in the anarchic ruins of society, Ray picked up sword fighting. He’d explained a little — that ammo had been thin on the ground, that it wasn’t reliable, and that things were so poorly maintained that guns locked up more often than not, but it still means that he’s less comfortable in his metal exo-suit and more comfortable with a blade in his hand.

Blondie leads him through katas every afternoon, training him in forms where he’d mostly just learned how not to get dead. The two of them, in tank tops and tight leggings and sweat shimmering on their bare skin, have attracted the appreciative attention of every member of the crew at least once. They’re pretty, and they’re even prettier when they pretend to fight.

And when Mick finally gets to see that blade work in action? Hell, it’s all he can do not to drag Haircut behind the nearest building and do something irrevocable.

It happens when they’re fixing a time aberration in Venice, and Mick is pissed enough about the hose and the stupid collars on every piece of clothing that Gideon will let them wear. He’s not thrilled about leaving the heat gun on the ship.

And when things go sideways — they always go sideways — Haircut is right there, rapier in hand, catching some asshole’s blade with his own and driving him back, away from Mick, with smooth footwork and prison-hard determination in his eyes.

And when the attacker is down, when Ray is left standing and the other guy definitely isn’t, when he turns to look at Mick, unscathed and surprised by it, something in Mick’s chest is ripped right open.

“Nice work, Ray,” Blondie says, carefully approaching from the front, clapping a hand on Ray’s shoulder that he can see coming. She doesn’t chase him when he shifts out of the way.

Sara’s obviously seen it, too.

Mick watches Ray go back to the ship and makes his decision.

~

When the door slides open, Ray is already staring at the opening, feet braced, hand on the hilt of the sword he’d brought back with him from the shitty future he’d been stuck in for five years. The hair on the back of his neck is standing up — Mick can see it from where he’s standing — and the grit of his teeth, the set of his jaw says that ‘fight’ has beaten out every ‘flight’ instinct that Ray Palmer ever had.

It’s a hell of a thing, to jump five years into someone else’s future when all you can remember of that person is a goofy grin and painful sincerity. When that sweet, earnest boy has been replaced with a hardened shell that Ray must’ve built like the ATOM suit: one piece at a time.

Mick steps into Ray’s quarters, lets the door slide shut behind him, and keeps his hands in view. He doesn’t want to spook him, but the kid needs a reminder of where he is. What he can have.

He’s shied away from Pretty Boy’s hand on his shoulder and Mick isn’t in the habit of caring about the puppy-dog look on Nate’s face, but he knows he’s never seen Ray put it there before. Which means that Ray hasn’t let his guard down enough to suffer a touch for years, by Mick’s estimate.

“What do you want?” Ray’s natural chattiness is all but gone. Everything he says is clipped and measured, like unfiltered speech is a dangerous luxury he’s had to give up.

Mick doesn’t say anything.

There’s no way he’d be able to unclench his jaw long enough to explain. And maybe he could’ve said something that would’ve been enough for the old Ray, but this one has tattooed suspicion into every inch of his skin, and Mick knows enough to know that he can’t meet Ray where he is if he tries to do it with words right now.

So Mick just steps forward slowly, watches Ray put down the weapon — which is more flattering than Mick had expected it to be — and then keeps walking until Ray is pinned back against the bulkhead, arms at his sides, the full bulk of Mick’s body pressed along his front to keep him steady and still.

There’s a moment where Ray wants to fight it. Mick feels those necessity-hardened muscles tense and coil and bunch and even his limited view of the side of Ray’s jaw is enough to see the indecision playing out on his face. But there’s enough of the boy scout under all the layers of ‘post-apocalyptic badass’ he’s had to build up that when the tension finally breaks, it isn’t with a shove.

It’s with a controlled collapse and he sags against Mick’s chest.

Finally, finally, Mick lets himself bring his own hands up. He greedily slips one between the bulkhead and Ray’s back, beneath the threadbare shirt he’s insisted on wearing to press his palm against the hot, smooth skin of the genius’s lower back. It’s marred with a scar he hadn’t had before his latest stranding, and Mick hates and loves that scar. Hates that someone was hurting Ray when he wasn’t there to prevent it, loves that the other man had taken enough of a hit and _survived_ that everyone knew it hadn’t gotten the better of him.

His other hand comes up to cup the back of Ray’s neck and he drops his head forward to rest on Mick’s shoulder.

The heaving breaths in his chest aren’t quite sobs but they aren’t far enough away from them for Mick’s taste. He pushes Ray back harder, lined up from shoulder to knee, tugging him closer at the small of his back, hand clamped on the back of his neck and holds on until Ray’s breathing starts to slow. When the shuddering, shivering gusts fade into steady streams of hot breath down Mick’s collar, he eases his grip.

“Shirt off. Lie down.” He pulls back only when Ray’s given a tight, silent nod with his head still bowed.

It’s the first time that Mick has seen Ray shirtless since Before and he doesn’t want to catalogue all the new scars but it’s hard to avoid. Some of them are easy: knife wounds, road rash, at least one unlucky gunshot that Mick wants to know immediately who had sewn it up, because Haircut couldn’t have reached it himself.

But then there are others. Something that might’ve been an electrical burn. Something that looks like someone grafted scales onto Ray’s side and then changed their mind.

He makes himself stop staring, keeps his expression placid so Ray won’t be self-conscious, already making himself vulnerable by slipping off his shirt and lying on the still-made bunk without any weapons that Mick can see — although he’s not stupid enough to think there isn’t a knife under that pillow.

Mick shrugs out of his shirt, kicks off his shoes, and lowers himself down to the bed slowly — no sudden movements, no unexpected changes. Ray lets him settle most of his weight onto Ray’s chest and hips and thigh, spreading skin to skin and holding Ray down while that jackrabbit heartbeat struggles to slow.

“Okay?” Mick asks.

“Yeah.” It’s barely a breath, but Mick can hear it with his ear so close to Ray’s mouth and he suppresses the shiver that the gust of air over the sensitive shell inspires. Not the time.

This isn’t about sex, though if Ray wanted it, Mick wouldn’t complain. This is about remembering that touch isn’t dangerous in every context. This is about being reminded that you can be held inside your skin by something other than iron-clad self control.

It’s no surprise when Ray’s hands lift from his sides and curl in the belt loops at Mick’s waist. It isn’t a surprise when he turns his head to rest his nose against Mick’s hair. And it isn’t a surprise when his breath slows and his mouth goes slack and he falls asleep.

It’s a little bit of a surprise when Mick feels himself slip under after him.

~

They wake up slowly. Warm and cozy and tangled together like Mick has almost never been with someone. He’s not big on staying the night. Cuddling after, sure. Why not. Touch is touch and it’s all pretty good. But falling asleep is something else. Falling asleep means letting your guard all the way down and Mick hasn’t been able to do that with another person since Snart died.

But falling asleep in a hideout in the same room as Snart had never meant his hands on sharp hipbones, soft hair against his face. There was hot skin under his lips and a not-entirely-unexpected hardness pressing against his hip.

“Sorry.” Ray’s voice is rough and he’s awake now, Mick can tell from the way tension saps back into his body. Tension he’s only just managed to get rid of.

“No.”

“No?” There’s a hint of the old Ray there, incredulous, sputtering Ray with his easy smiles and laughter, his earnest openness.

It does something funny to Mick to hear it. He rolls his hips a little. Not enough to be considered a grind, just enough to illustrate that Ray ain’t exactly alone, and it doesn’t have to matter.

“Oh,” Ray breathes and the gust of breath that time is too much to resist. Mick shivers.

It’s slow, but the movement is undeniable. Ray hesitates, but his knees start to spread and Mick slips between his thighs as easily as he’s being welcomed in. They line up slowly, carefully. It’s like moving through water — heavier than it should be, pushing against a wall of it rather than slicing through in a clean dive.

Haircut looks like he’d know about diving.

But Mick just knows they both have sleep clinging to their brains and if Ray wants to hide behind that, Mick won’t stop him. He lifts his mouth from Ray’s neck just enough to meet the lips that Ray is turning toward him. It’s a slow kiss, melting together rather than crashing against the rocks the way Mick had imagined it might go if they’d ever kissed Before.

This might be better.

Ray’s mouth is hot and sweet and it opens beneath Mick’s as soon as he licks across it. He sinks deeper into the kiss, his tongue sliding against Ray’s — pliant and yielding and Mick knows, he knows that Ray hasn’t been pliant in the past five years. The press of Ray’s tongue is slick and hot and Mick sucks gently at it, encouraging him to stay, to let Mick taste him for as long as they can go without breathing.

Ray moves his hips first. He rocks slowly, like he wants it, can’t stop himself, but is waiting for the trap to spring. The tension in his hands won’t do.

Mick slides his hand up from Ray’s hip to his shoulder, down his bicep and forearm to tangle his fingers with Ray’s. He pushes until their joined hands are pinned above Ray’s head, back into his bunk, immobile and _safe_.

The mouth under his own stutters on a whimper before Mick silences that, too. There isn’t much to do to keep him quiet. And that’s familiar, too. Mick knows what it’s like to be someplace you can’t risk being heard when you finally give in and see to your body’s needs. It’s tempting to go the other way, to make Ray give him every little sound of pleasure that he stifled for the past five years.

And Mick promises himself that if he gets a next time, he’ll do just that. But right then all he wants is Ray as liquid and loose as he can get him. Guard all the way down. All he wants is to drag him back into the Waverider and out of that hellscape where they’d left him. All he wants is to steal him back.

So Mick rolls his hips against Ray’s, feels the boy scout’s length under the base of his cock, spreads the genius’s thighs a little further by spreading his own. Shifting his weight, he tucks his forearm under Ray’s neck and cradles him there, holding him still to kiss and lick and nip over and over again, softly, rhythmically, in a predictable pattern of pleasure that would become reassurance if Ray could let himself trust it.

If he could let himself trust that the next movement would be the stroke of Mick’s tongue along his own, and after that he’ll place gentle teeth against his lower lip and tug, ever so slightly. After that, Mick will nuzzle against him, brush their lips across each other, then dip his tongue out to taste Ray’s mouth again.

His hand will flex around Ray’s, his hips will continue their rolling grind.

Nothing will interrupt them — something savage in Mick’s brain rebels at the idea that someone might try — and they’ll find satisfaction and nothing terrible will happen because of it.

But Mick knows perfectly well that it isn’t so easy to trust something like that. So he keeps moving. Keeps his actions safe and predictable. He laps at Ray’s mouth because it’s comforting and because he wants it. God, he wants it. He rolls his hips slowly because one of them might shatter if he went harder, if he went faster, and he isn’t at all certain which one of them it would be.

He would keep at it for hours, for days if Ray wanted it. He’d keep the two of them in that room until they starved, tasting only each other and the bruises they’d press into each other’s skin. But it can’t have been more than twenty minutes when Ray finally breaks, lifting his heels from the bunk to wrap his legs around Mick’s hips.

Mick groans against Ray’s mouth, shaking with the effort not to fall apart immediately. His skin burns everywhere it’s pressed against the boy scout’s. He wants to dip his head, to lap at Ray’s nipples and find out if he likes a tongue in his navel, to bite his hips and slide his cock into the back of Mick’s throat until Mick’s lost the shredded remains of his sanity — but this isn’t about what Mick wants. At least, not only about that.

This is about keeping Ray safe.

So he drags his tongue along the silky-soft inner part of Ray’s lips, he keeps his fingers tangled with Ray’s to hold him steady, to keep him grounded, and he shifts his hips just enough to put pressure at the base of Ray’s cock and _writhe_. It builds quickly from there. Ray’s clenching his thighs and pulling Mick tighter against all that hardness and heat and Mick’s concentrating on holding on long enough to make sure Ray gets to come exactly the way he wants to.

The kisses fade in and out, the pair of them panting against each other’s mouths and there’s a perfect, tight heat coiled in Mick’s hips, his thighs are burning at the slow, steady pace of his movements, and he’s going to feel every second of his time with Ray in his core for the next week.

He already wants to do it again.

Mick shifts his arm, tangles his free hand in Ray’s hair to hold him steady, wishes for a third hand so he could get them out of their clothes. There’s something exciting about dry humping the genius, something that feels weirdly wholesome given how hard he’s going to make the other man come, but he can’t help but imagine the slick slide of their flesh against each other and he promises himself a next time, if he can steal one.

“Mick,” Ray moans, voice breaking on the single syllable, lips red and swollen and kiss-bruised and his eyelids flutter open until he’s meeting Mick’s gaze and locking on.

There’s no hiding from a look like that. There’s no closing his eyes and pretending the moment hadn’t happened. There’s no turning away or hiding in a kiss. There’s just hearing his name in Haircut’s ragged, broken voice and seeing the pleasure-blown darkness in his eyes and being helpless to do anything but hitch his hips forward, chasing the peak he can see building in Ray’s eyes.

“Please —“ and Mick didn’t mean to make him beg, but he can’t deny that it does something to him.

He grinds down, over and over, while Ray shivers and struggles to gasp in enough breath, and Mick dips his head low enough that licking his own lips licks Ray’s to when he says “ _Come_.”

And Ray does.

His legs lock tight around Mick’s hips and his body arches and there’s a sudden rush of heat between their bodies that sends Mick right over the edge after him, spilling in his jeans and stifling a sob in the juncture of Ray’s neck and shoulder.

When their breath comes back Mick loosens the fingers that have locked around Ray’s hand and hair. He leans over and retrieves his t-shirt, mopping the sweat and come off of their bodies well enough that they probably wouldn’t stick together, and sags back onto the bunk to catch his breath.

The next time his ribs expand, Ray’s hand shoots out, wraps around his wrist. “Don’t leave,” he whispers.

“Not gonna.” Mick tugs Ray against his chest. “Not ’til you tell me to go, Haircut.”

There’s a shaky nod and Ray wraps himself around Mick, settling in again to sleep.

Haircut is finally back. And if he needs some reminding, Mick’s happy to step in.


End file.
